1978 – MARRIAGE AND CHILD

1978 saw me back in Urunga and defeated once more by Sydney and my own nature. I think Tad and I variously lived in caravans, small flats and then a boathouse on the river bank. I was safely out of the City Scene but still inclined to chemical indulgence.

My hair grew longer and curlier and halfway through the year, a locum made the discovery that I was pregnant. I had rather thought I could not have children and so had the medical profession.

I had a comment posted yesterday which lifted some of the historical guilt I have always felt about my thoughtless and shallow way of life. This is the comment posted on 1977. I am very glad its here.

Beautifully written, with much self courage, reflections on a not so nice year……Sydney and the cross were a wonderful place but many of us also began our descent into drugs, alcohol and madness – and sadly, imho, no-one seemed to care – 1977 marked the start for me of a path up and out of there, but I never regret or criticise myself for my life choices at the time, as they all go into making up me. I often reflect on the Cross etc as a place that we were drawn into in our search for whatever we searched for, but unfortunately the place (if a place can have a soul) ate many of us up…………….but many, especially like yourself, found a way out of there and the voyage enriched your soul forever……..your comment about pawnbrokers got to me……god knows how many times we pawned things, for a mere pittance of what they were really worth, promising ourselves we would retrieve them…..but we never did….and our possessions gradually slipped out of our lives. Ah well…..a great story you are telling there and I look forward to the coming years.

The long emptiness of a single drug life came to an end. One evening

when my brother, the man and I were sitting around, we asked the question ;” Why not get married?” That was a question which in later years, my brother and I acknowledged that we should have answered. I walked head on into the formality of a wedding to the local Shire President’s young son. My memory is of my mother in law sitting in a a chair in her sitting room and weeping copiously. She chose the carefully tiered dress for me and arranged a wedding within one month which involved almost everything I had never intended to do. We spent the wedding evening in the local motel and went to the Big Banana in Coffs Harbour for the day after. My radical friends came and both families. Noone had expected me to marry . I most certainly had not.

Then I retreated to the Boathouse on the banks of the Kalang River for a period of months where I was healthy and kind of happy. Fishing. Water and sun. Kate was born on Boxing Day of 1978. A natural birth in Bellingen Hospital and the beginning of a grand love affair.

‎"Sometimes we need to place love ahead of indiscriminate `factual honesty'. We cannot, under the guise of `perfect honesty', cruelly and unnecessarily hurt others. Always one must ask, `What is the best and most loving thing I can do?' LETTER, 1966. W.W.

MY THANKS TO YOU.

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